


Who Be Thee Sagacious

by shopfront



Series: Love & Lovage [1]
Category: The Last Witch Hunter (2015)
Genre: F/F, Pining, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:27:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23230933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shopfront/pseuds/shopfront
Summary: When Chloe runs away from home, there's only two things she takes with her: Miranda, and the books that might help them along the way.
Relationships: Chloe/Miranda
Series: Love & Lovage [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2007448
Comments: 1
Kudos: 7
Collections: Worldbuilding Exchange 2020





	Who Be Thee Sagacious

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reeby10](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reeby10/gifts).



“I dare you to take a selfie with it,” Miranda called out.

“Why in magic would I do that?” Chloe asked. She shot an incredulous look over her shoulder at Miranda, who was lounging across the hood of their hire car a safe distance away with a sandwich in one hand and a book in another. “Have you completely lost your mind? I’m not actually going near it. It’s only meant for resurrection and healing the fatally wounded—not the living—and with my luck I’ll probably get covered with pollen and end up in a coma or hallucinating the Witch Queen across the next three states.”

“But it’s just a defenceless little plant!”

Chloe shook her head, amused despite herself. “You do realise that’s not a good reason to risk it, right?”

There was a soft thump and footsteps as Miranda walked up beside her, still dusting crumbs from her hands. She shook her hair out of her face and gave Chloe a mischievous look. For a second, the only thing Chloe could see was the brilliant light of the noonday sun as it turned the colour of Miranda’s eyes bright like seaglass. It took her breath away, just like always.

“—should take a photo with it _because_ it scares you, and because we promised each other when we started this trip that we were going to challenge ourselves. Besides, it doesn’t release pollen during the day and even back there I could see that it’s not in full bloom yet,” Miranda was saying when Chloe shook herself back to attention. She smirked and leaned in closer, until her hair was brushing against Chloe’s shoulders and all Chloe could smell was her perfume, and lowered her voice. “You’ve also got me to take care of you if something goes wrong.”

“You can’t take care of me if you get dosed, too,” Chloe pointed out with a laugh.

Miranda raised her hands in defeat and backed away a few steps with a grin. “Well? I’m clear now.”

Biting her lip, Chloe looked from Miranda to the tiny bush and back again. Its leaves were swaying in the breeze, sparkling and shimmering with each gust as it released small waves of magic invisible to any eye but theirs. “No,” she finally said as she backed away as well. “No, I’m not going to risk it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you read about how to find it. It’s gorgeous. But I’m fine looking at it from here.”

Shrugging, Miranda brushed past her and pulled out a phone and one of the small bags she kept spelled for magical stasis. “Then I’m going in,” she announced cheerily as she ducked a vine and crawled over to the bush.

Chloe cursed and hissed Miranda’s name, nearly tripping over herself to get clear when the breeze picked up again. But though the leaves shimmered and swayed more deeply, the flowers never opened—and Chloe could safely admire Miranda’s smile from afar as she snapped photos and carefully made a cutting for her growing collection.

*

“It’s not haunted. That’s just a stupid human superstition, I can’t understand why you’d believe it,” Chloe huffed as she slammed the boot of the car. She wrapped her scarf around her neck tighter and tried to tuck the ends down into her jacket, only to end up furiously poking at it again when her angry, jerking movements knotted it into a giant mess.

Miranda waved the almanac in her hand—a little carelessly, in Chloe’s opinion, for a book so old and brittle that it was visibly frayed at the binding even in the dim light of dusk. “It’s not just what those humans in the diner said. There’s also a record in here about a local monument that stands for the past and is bound by dangerous magic and I’m not chancing it being the same place.”

Chloe paused half-way through angrily tugging her gloves on. “A monument standing for the past?” she asked incredulously. “That’s practically gibberish, and it’s a house! Not a monument! That’s an entirely useless description and you shouldn’t let it stop you seeing new things. And what happened to doing brave things together?”

Shuddering with exaggerated effect, Miranda just crawled back into the car and slammed the door without answering. “Have fun,” she yelled over the sudden blasting of the radio as she turned on the engine and began to crank up the heat.

Grumbling, Chloe gave in and stomped up the porch steps alone.

Ten minutes later, she fumbled open the passenger door and scrambled inside, one glove missing and her scarf askew. “Drive!” she yelled when Miranda stared at her, eyes wide. “Don’t ask, just drive!”

*

“Do you ever wonder what it would be like if we had actual classes about this stuff instead of having to cobble it all together ourselves from third hand reports and old books?” Chloe asked Miranda idly one day. They’d spent all afternoon lying in the sun on a hill that had turned out to be just a hill—not the loci of natural power that they’d thought it might be—and it had left Chloe feeling unusually drowsy and contemplative.

As pleasant as it was, it was also the latest in a long string of frustrating duds. But they’d started hearing rumours of a witch gathering place not too far off their current route, and Chloe was already hoping to pick up some pointers there on where to look next.

Miranda hummed thoughtfully. “Maybe? But I don’t think I’d want to learn spells instead of, like, math. There’s not enough of us living close together outside the cities. We’d just have been the weird homeschooled kids growing our own food instead of having parents who are accountants and nurses or whatever, and can actually pay the rent.”

“Oh, come on. You can’t tell me that you wouldn’t love to live in a forest like our ancestors did,” Chloe said as she rolled onto her stomach so they were facing each other. “Surrounded by plants, tending a wild garden and living in our own history for once.”

Propping her chin on the back of her folded arms, Chloe watched as Miranda stretched lazily towards her and sleepily blinked open her eyes. The arch of her back was entrancing, and the tips of her fingers grazed Chloe’s arms, making her shiver. Their eyes locked, and something deep in Chloe’s magic stirred restlessly as her heartbeat picked up in response.

“Maybe. But that was always more your thing,” Miranda said eventually, glancing away and breaking the tension.

Chloe frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t care if I’m surrounded by humans or witches as long as I have my plants. I’m not….”

“Not what?” Chloe asked, suddenly tense for all the wrong reasons as she raised herself up on her elbows. Miranda bit her lip, looking uneasy for the first time all day. “Not what, Miranda?”

“Not always alone in a crowd and looking for ways to belong,” Miranda said, before making a noise of dismay when Chloe immediately moved to stand up.

Her hand fastened tight on Chloe’s wrist before she could get to her feet though, keeping her close as Miranda continued. Her words rushed together as she tried to get them out fast enough to stop Chloe leaving in a huff, but her grip was strong and sure when Chloe half-heartedly tried to tug free.

“I don’t have your powers or your family, and I know— I know it’s not the same for me, Chloe,” she said, her eyes pleading. “But you never feel at home with witches _or_ with humans, and going to some mythical magic school that’s never existed wouldn’t have changed that.”

“I just want—,” Chloe said, and then cut herself off because she didn’t know what she wanted. What she was even looking for or why they were on the road, hunting down old magical sites like it would teach them something about being witches they couldn’t learn from all their carefully hoarded ancestral grimoires. Like it didn’t just slip through her fingers all over again each time they picked up and moved on.

“I know,” Miranda replied quietly.

Awkwardly, Miranda got up onto her knees without letting go of Chloe. She crawled closer until they were curled together in a tight bundle of clinging, over-warm limbs—Chloe collapsing into Miranda’s arms, relief and sadness waring with each other inside her even as she let Miranda’s touch soothe it all away.

“You just need something that’s yours,” Miranda murmured, her grip finally relaxing as Chloe tucked her head in under Miranda’s chin. “That’s all. I’ll help you. We’ll seek out as many gatherings and ask as many witches as you need to until we find it, whatever it is.”

And for the first time, held tight in Miranda’s arms, Chloe believed they would.


End file.
